


Like A Bell Before The Toll

by th_esaurus



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-13 02:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16008800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: “We left so many behind,” Francis croaked.“We did not leave them,” James said. “They were simply left. There is no blame to lay.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ty to all the people who have listened to me yell about this the past week.

When Francis thought back to the rescue, he could only recall it in hazy fragments, like Greek poetry: half remembered and ill translated from long-ago school days.

Though he had been upright and conscious the whole trip through - exhausted, yes, but given tinned fruit, meat and the all-clear from the ship’s stoic doctor - he could nonetheless only remember patches of days, glimpsed as if through fog: the unfamiliar listing of the ship after so long on a motionless deck, the bustle of a crew with duties to attend rather than time to idle, the strangeness of regular sunrises as they sailed further south. The new faces, the old faces and the missing ones.

Thomas Blanky was dead. Like a faithful old dog, he had snuck away from the group to die alone. His rotting leg was making gulls circle the camp the closer they got to shore, more and more bold, diving for a snatch at whatever rancid meat smelt, to them, like dinner. It tickled Thomas, this. He spent a night drinking with the remains of the company - lightening their load, so he claimed - and then he loped off into the fog, waving a bottle of rum to the skies as if offering a drink to the birds.

Francis missed him like a lost tooth.

Jopson, too, had perished.

He had tried to die quietly, unassumingly. He never wanted to burden a soul, least of all his captain, and Francis had held his head in one cradled arm and smoothed his sodden hair like he was a child with a fever. “Screw decorum now,” Francis told him gently, and then listened to him weep and wail as he went.

They held a small ceremony for him. Too exhausted for burial, but Francis said a few words before they trudged on.

Goodsir did not die, but vanished in the night. There were whispers that the Lady Silence had been seen tracking them for some miles.

James—

Ah, James.

He, at least, would be well.

Francis had damn near carried him the last two days before rescue. A biting, wet wind turned the shale slippery and cruel, and he’d slipped in his hauling harness, left his leg in ugly shape and his forehead prickled with the sweating effort of simply staying alive.

“Go on,” he had said, panting, pushing at Francis’ leg as he sat on the floor, his knee at that dreadful angle— “Go on, Francis—”

“I damn well am going on,” Francis spat through his gritted teeth as he hefted James to his side and held up as much of his weight as he could. Bridgens, good-hearted, had helped him take the other side and the three hobbled along the coast like war-mates, unable to leave a man behind.

They had abandoned the boats that day. Francis would rather starve and carry James a few extra miles. They were less than twenty men, now. Chewing on boot leather to trick their minds into thinking their mouths were eating.

All this Francis remembers with clarity. Right up until Little pointed, half crazed, at the speck of the ship in the molten distance. The sun setting and the sky jagged with colour behind the fluttering English flag atop the sturdy mast.

*

But to see Sophia again, after all that—

_Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs, troubles me—_

*

Their saviour was a neat, nippy little post ship with old money fueling its crew and luck on its side; the mouth of Back Fish’s Bay was near free of ice and they’d travelled apace from England, reaching the arctic by mid-autumn. The low ceilings and dark stained wood felt like the echo of comfort after long weeks under the unforgiving open skies.

Francis thought he would have missed privacy, but he spent little time in his quarters and more wandering the bustle of the deck or surrounded by his comrades in the sick bay. James was housed there at first, and then moved to quarters of his own, and Francis was quite content to pull a chair up to his bedside, keep him in good spirits while they were both awake, and doze there rather than sleep in his own room.

The doctor was a stoic but approachable man who reminded Francis of poor MacDonald. The scurvy would pass, he told Francis confidently, but Fitzjames’ fall had left him with a fractured tibia that would never fully set.

“He will walk again,” the doctor told Francis kindly, cleaning his eyeglasses with a cotton rag, “but not well. His naval career is over.”

The news, somehow, did not burden Francis. James had proven his worth.

The post captain had little but disdain for Francis. A man who ordered not one ship but two abandoned was the worst kind of coward in his eyes, and Francis had no desire to disabuse him of this notion. They avoided each other.

And then there was—

And then there was Sophia.

Like a painted figurehead, he had seen her on their ragged approach. Upright and small at the bow of the ship, her hands buried in a thick fur muffler, a bulky coat about her shoulders that made her seem ill-proportioned.

In the near-delirium of bringing the men aboard - shouts overlapping, a cacophony of cheers and sobs, the wind picking up as though in a last attempt to keep them stranded, James unconscious at his side, a dead weight, blood on his bottom lip where it had oozed from his blackening gums, and all the while Francis roaring for a stretcher to be lowered for the wounded - in that pandemonium, Sophia had helped him clamber up onto the deck, both her hands on his right arm, and she kept saying, “Francis, my dear, oh, Francis—”

“How can you be here?” Francis had hissed at her. She had stepped back at once as though stung.

 

*

Francis heard she had married, of course.

It was the reason they were alive.

*

She did not come to visit Francis immediately.

Instead, apparently, she had used James like a confessional in the early weeks of the journey home; asking first for news of Sir John and accepting what he told her with sad, silent grace.

“I said he had lost the leg in a rigging mishap,” James told Francis wearily. “If ever his body is found, there would be questions.”

Sophia’s next priority was Francis, his health and his state of mind, though James was more tactful in what he reported back to Francis, knowing, as he did, how easily rankled Francis was by idle gossip. James was a near-stranger to her, but she spilled her story as though her heart was full and could do nothing more than overflow.

At the close of 1846, as the second winter set in, she could no longer stand the inaction of men.  Though Lady Jane was corralling with Dickens and his set, fundraising for a rescue attempt, these were little more than token donations from people with passing interest. Too slow to send a rescue party even by spring. Sophia needed money and influence.

So she married. She put herself out in society with a fierceness she had never managed before, and accepted the first proposal she acquired from a baronet earning ten thousand or more a year. Sir Clarence Hatton was his name.

“Sophia Hatton,” Francis murmured, testing it. The sound left a sour taste on his tongue.

This Sir Clarence too was aboard the ship, secreted in his quarters and violently ill the whole journey. Sophia had been keeping him company, fetching him damp towels and helping him sip lukewarm water. She had scarcely left those rooms in months.

She was a bad omen, of course. A woman aboard a boat. She preferred to stay hidden.

James relayed this to Francis haltingly, trying his best to avoid the bruises Sophia had long ago left under Francis’ skin.

“Will you talk with her?” he asked, genuine and without pressure. His hand was already held between Francis’ warm palms, as it often was these days, and James squeezed his fingers softly. “I suspect she has missed you desperately, Francis. Though she is too well-bred to admit it.”

Francis cannot now recall what reply he gave, but suffice to say, he spoke to Sophia only once on the return trip. They passed by chance, late of an evening, as Francis began his nightly rounds of the ship - a captain’s habit that kept his legs in use and his mind distracted, even if he had no recourse to give orders.

She must have been just leaving her husband’s room. As it was, she was facing him, and he in profile to her; were she a frigate, and this meeting a skirmish, she would have at once had the upper hand. All guns forward.

“Francis,” she breathed. “Are you well?”

“Quite well.”

“I’m glad. I’m glad to hear it.”

They had once passed a warm hour complaining about the necessity of small talk. The boredom of discussing the weather or the lateness of the hour with acquaintances one had done one’s best to avoid. Francis had laughed himself red in the cheek. They had, he remembered, been in bed at the time. Sophia's pale, bare arms wrapped around his blushing neck.

“The weather seems to have cleared,” Sophia said miserably.

“Yes. We are making quite a clip now,” was all Francis could respond.

A great and awful silence descended upon them.

“Francis,” she tried, “Francis, I—”

“You must think me terribly remiss,” Francis said, stalling her at the off. “I have not yet thanked you.”

“For what?” she asked, bewildered.

“For my life,” Francis said. He was unable to look her in the eye. “I owe you a great debt.”

She stepped forward, then. Perhaps she had wanted to take his hand, but it was fixed awkwardly at his side. So instead, she kissed him softly, on the edge of his jaw, the easiest place she could reach. “You owe me nothing but your continued survival,” she said, very quietly; and there was nothing more to be said between them, after that.

 

*

Francis was never introduced to the sick, rich husband, and could not claim to be distressed by the oversight.

 

*

This all was five months prior. A lifetime, to have spent on the shore.

 

*

He and James took rooms together in Marylebone. Francis could not now recall whose idea it was, only that it had seemed convenient, what with Francis landlocked on half pay and James’ impending discharge. “A bloody pensioner,” he grumbled good-naturedly.

They did not need an excess of space - room enough for two writing desks, places to sleep and take breakfast, and a hearth where they could play a hand of cards or smoke a pipe in comfort. The ceilings were as tall as two men, the drawing room painted in mint, though whether that was in vogue or out of it, Francis had no guesses: he appreciated the freshness.

James acquired a fanciful cane, a ridiculous expense that Francis complained over, though not too loudly. A man was allowed his occasional excess. He could walk on his own steam about the house, and they laid out the rooms unusually to help with the task, so that James lived on the lower floor almost as if a butler, while Francis resided upstairs, shouting down to him jovially in conversation when they were both at their leisure. But he despised the limp he had been left with, and used the cane in public, to handsome effect.

“It gives me a very unearned air of enigma,” he joked.

“Entirely earned, I should say,” Francis retorted.

They slipped uneasily into the life always meant for Sir John.

Life became a dry series of meetings with the Admiralty, speaking engagements at the Royal Naval clubs or the Astronomer’s society, private invitations from would-be adventurers and dinners surrounded by an almost scandalous amount of eligible ladies. At least James could step in and save Francis from embarrassing himself at the less formal dinners: he told the whole story thrillingly, with exactly the balance of heroism and gristle that people liked to hear.

Francis tended to linger in the darker corners of his mind when he spoke of it all. Distracted, dragged back to the arctic. The cold shock of waking up each morning to a fresh wave of dead faces. Those who had perished in the night.

He had vague nightmares. He had suffered them throughout their long walk, and on the ship headed back to Portsmouth. Unsatisfying dreams of white shapes, unintelligible shouts, bloodied mouths, and a crushing sensation of being—not just lost, but having never existed at all. The struggle of his life blown aside as easily as a sharp breeze clears the ash of a dead campfire.

The aftermath of one particularly probing supper was such a nightmare, and Francis woke in sweat and shock to the shadow of James standing in his doorway. A silhouette at first, and then stepping into the room, catching the shaft of moonlight from the split of the curtain, his face pale and clammy with concern. Climbing the stairs must have been a great effort for him. His nightshirt hung on him loose and low at the neck: he had never truly gained back the weight the arctic had taken from him.

“James,” Francis murmured, only half awake. He rubbed his face with a sticky palm, and tried to sit up. “I’m—did I stir you? Damn it all.”

The smile James offered him was small and wan. He sat gingerly at the end of Francis’ bed, lowering himself down slowly with his bad leg outstretched. He put a hand out, just laid atop the bedsheets, well within Francis’ reach. He could choose to take it, or not, and neither decision would cause him shame or James embarrassment.

“It comes back to us most at night,” James said.

Francis already could not recall the details of his dream. Only a chasm of white.

He put his hand atop James’ without fanfare, and James turned his palm so that they could clasp hands properly. A grounding sort of grip.

“We left so many behind,” Francis croaked.

“We did not leave them,” James said. “They were simply left. There is no blame to lay.”

Francis had a dozen retorts for this, and swallowed them all.

“Move yourself,” James said, after a long silence. “Those stairs’ll be the death of me if I wrangle with them again this evening.”

Awkwardly, stifling no small amount of pain, James clambered under the bedsheets. His bare feet were cold and Francis helped him swaddle them in the bottom of the duvet, rubbing them briskly between his palms to help the blood flow.

They had spent several agonising nights sleeping under the arctic aurora, once the boats were abandoned and death more or less accepted. They were still walking, in the day, but barely. A few straggling miles a day, and when it came time to sleep, whether the sun was set or risen, they huddled together in small groups, packs under their heads as pillows and no cover save for their coats and knotted limbs. Francis recalled James shaking almost constantly against his chest.

He slept still and deep now, at Francis’ back. Nothing more, nothing less. The same escaped Francis, but he could not find it in him to mind. He’d rather the black of night and James’ even breathing, than white and silence and nothingness.

 

*

Francis had a damnable speaking engagement at the British Museum the next evening, a crowd he knew would act civil but ask questions of the savage nonsense they assumed about the Inuit; about men in desperate circumstances. “I refuse to indulge them,” he had snapped as James helped him pin his epaulettes. It would be a long and lonely night, and he had let a vile mood overtake him.

Francis had never managed these social obligations well. He was happy to take in a recital with Ross between expeditions, or spend an hour at the coffee houses with an old crewmate from his midshipman days, or let Thomas drag him somewhere bawdy when he was feeling low and wretched. But the straight-backed dinners of the Admiralty stifled him. He could not stand the ceremony, surrounded by—well, at the time, surrounded by men like James Fitzjames, easily popular with their peers, well-suited to their uniforms, happy to trade stories all night of near-misses in battle or smooth political parlay.

“You loitered about in the corners waiting for a drink to be offered,” James recalled. “There were men desperate to hear _your_ tales as well, you know.”

Francis scoffed. “Not one of them approached me.”

“You were dreadfully unapproachable,” James chided, and Francis had batted him away like an old nanny, both of them laughing. They laughed aplenty in each other’s company now.

Alone, Francis was quite dour.

The speech was a dry as expected. He read mechanically from his notes, and then fielded a few lurid questions dressed up in euphemism: nobody uttered the word _cannibalism_ but rumour had dogged them since their return to London. Lady Jane had sent Francis a ridiculous letter that he had never bothered to reply to, which half accused him of tattling to the papers that Sir John had been killed and consumed by his starved, rabid crew. He shared the letter with James, who almost spat in anger, and then together they watched it burn in the crackling fireplace.

Francis checked his pocket-watch only twice, which he considered enormous self-restraint.

And then, just as the compere announced a final question, a movement in the corner of the long hall caught Francis’ eye. The small, slight opening of a door at the far end, a slim burst of light from the outside quickly extinguished again as the door was carefully, soundlessly closed.

Sophia had come.

Francis had not even told her he was speaking.

Nonetheless, she had come.

 

*

She looked as fresh as she ever had. Not salt-whipped and worried as he had last seen her aboard the rescue, but hale from the country air, her eyes sparkling, her hair sweetly curled. She looked as she had done the day he first proposed to her.

For once Francis hoped his host would keep him locked in agonising small talk, but he was turned loose to the crowd to mingle. Sophia found him easily.

She was better at escaping social niceties than Francis. He always came of brusque and rude. Sophia made it seem like she was agonised to part ways. She made people miss her.

The Museum was closed to the public and it did not take them long to find some privacy. He followed close behind her, unquestioning, as though she were dragging him by the hand. Of course, they had only ever assumed such familiarity behind closed doors. No longer, Francis thought dully.

Sophia veered into a shadowy alcove, just wide enough for the both of them to stand a handspan apart, and not quite tall enough for Francis to stand upright. Her head was very close to hers.

“Sophia,” he sighed. His foul mood had soured into exhaustion. “Why are you here?”

“For fabric,” she said, smiling; an apparent truth. “The Berkshire printmakers are nothing on Liberty’s, and the anteroom is desperate for new curtains.” The perfect homemaker.

Francis rubbed his temples, and his elbow brushed dangerously close to her chest as he lowered his arm again.

“I have a suite at Brown’s for the night,” she said, something urgent in her voice now. “It—it is not far from your rooms, if I’m not mistaken. Would you escort me, Francis?”

“You are married now,” Francis snapped. “Surely your husband must walk you everywhere.”

“He did not come with me to town.”

They were speaking in such unnecessary whispers. Their conversation far more innocent than their bowed heads would imply.

“Then Lady Jane—”

“Lady Jane did not wish to chance a meeting with you,” Sophia said, and Francis laughed, an unkind bark that echoed in the vast, empty hall.

Christ, he wanted to take her hand. He wished—he wished James were here to hold her hand in his stead as easily as he picked up threads of conversation that Francis could not keep aloft.

“Why do you haunt me here, Sophia?” he said instead.

She was too stunned. “— _Haunt_ you?”

“I have ghosts aplenty without living apparitions as well.”

Once upon a time she would have bitten back, that glorious tête-à-tête they delighted in. Little jabbing cuts marked upon one another that sparked with bright pain, a reminder that one was alive more than any kind of threat. Now she simply seemed sad, an uncomplicated sadness that flooded Francis with immediate regret.

He made no motion to soothe her.

“Let us find you a cab,” he said, defeated. “And then we can both be on our way.”

It was, evidently, not what she had come for. But she could do nothing except nod.

 

*

It had rained during his speech, fat patters of it on the distant rooftop. The streets were dark now, and damp from it, and Sophia pulled her cowl around her shoulders tightly as Francis tried to hail a horseman. It took too long in this uneasy weather. He wanted badly to be home. Not to tell James of everything that had transpired here, but to fill pipes for them both and smoke and stew by the firelight, unspeaking.

It was too late, by now. James would be abed.

At last, a cab pulled up next to Francis’ outstretched arm, and, politely, he helped Sophia up into the carriage, gave the driver the address. Her gloved hand lingered a moment in his.

“Goodnight, Miss Cracroft,” Francis said, quite forgetting.

She smiled, an old familiar tug at the side of her mouth, tarnished by unhappiness, and did not correct him.

 

*

Francis must have walked home, of course, but could scarcely remember the route his feet took. Only that, unthinking, he had hung up his coat and taken off his boots in the hallways, and padded heavily through to James’ room instead of his own. Murmured some unintelligible thing, waited for James to shuffle over sleepily, making room, and climbed in beside him.

 

*

He and James—

 

*

They fell into something strange and easy.

Francis had fumbled around with boys in his youth, as was more common among the mates than any officer would admit. But this was not frantic, furtive palms fighting for release. James had simply held Francis’ chin in his hand gently, cocked his head, and asked, “May I—?” and then they were kissing.

He and James had gone, after all, from disdain to something like respect; to turn friendship into love-making was far less of a stretch.

James was a kindred spirit, and one that he had discovered slowly. So few seamen had ever journeyed to find the Nor’West Passage and come back alive that if any two should come across each other in the street, they were honour-bound to doff caps, shake hands, even if their expeditions had been years apart. But it was not just in this shared experience that Francis felt close to James; something had come prior to that. A sense of being misplaced in this world.

James, of course, had overcome the disadvantage of his birth with a defter hand than Francis. A man can obscure his parentage. He cannot fake his accent.

They were neither of them young and neither of them in full health, and put plenty of stock in the simple comfort of a held hand, crossed legs brushing one another at the ankle, kisses - long kisses, wet and slow, mouths open. “You kiss like a man about to be hanged,” James said once, breathlessly.

“Was that a compliment?”

“You can be quite sure of that,” James murmured, begging for more.

Still, they did fuck, on occasion. James told him a rambling story of the first time he had met with the fat end of a petty officer’s prick in the brig as a ship’s boy. “It was a memorable experience, though not exactly a pleasant one,” he said dryly, his fingers making absent-minded patterns on Francis’ bare chest. “I suppose I acquired a slight taste for it over the years, though that was sharply curtailed after all that nonsense in Singapore with Barrow. I never wanted to be discovered a hypocrite.”

They favoured their hands and mouths. It was easier on James’ leg, and more practical on the whole. They discovered quickly that Francis could not abide by the taste of it, and kept an old tumbler on the bedside table for him to spit into.

James, with a wildly misplaced pride, always swallowed.

Tentatively, Francis had begun drinking again. Not as he was before, not as a crutch. But he took some pleasure from a single glass of whiskey with James after dinner, before they retired for the night. Both, now, sleeping comfortably in the downstairs bed.

 

*

Comfort, Francis always found, was a bittersweet gift. Short-lived.

 

*

There was loose talk from the Admiralty of Francis captaining a return expedition to the find the Passage. A man of his experience, as close as he came, surely needed only a sturdier ship and a hardier crew to break through the final hundred-odd miles of ice.

Francis avoided the murmurs and they never became much louder than rumour.

Some other brazen adventurer would step forward to claim the Passage within a year or two. Load up a ship with another hundred men to sacrifice in pursuit of fool’s gold. Sanctioned wholeheartedly by the British Navy.

 

*

He received letters from Sophia with surprising regularity. As though she were sending them one after the other with no thought of awaiting response. Francis had tried to put pen to paper several times, and had only succeeded in recalling in all its cold clarity how cruel they had been to one another.

Every letter she sent contained a cordial invitation to meet with her and her husband at their Newbury country house.

He had, eventually, been pressed into sending an effusive letter of thanks to the rich husband for his swift kindness and deep pockets. Or rather, James had penned the letter and Francis stoically added his signature at the end. He did not even pay for the postage stamp; left it to James.

“She’s written to me, too,” James announced suddenly one evening. They had a hand of poker going, betting with pennies and tuppence pieces. Francis had only a two-pair, and had been distracted throughout the night by the insistent press of James’ bare ankle against his own. Abruptly, he set down his hand in his lap and levelled James with a grim stare. “We became fast friends on the trip back to England, you know. Of course, I accepted her gracious invitation.”

“—You what?”

“Oh, yes. It sounds delightful. A hunt, she said, though quite what season it is I’ve clean forgotten. I hope you’re a decent shot, Francis,” he said, mildly treacherous.

He was struck dumb for a moment and thought to return to his cards. And then Francis got up from his chair, near flustered, and sought out the liquor cabinet and poured himself a second drink.

“I’m not made for this life of social scheming,” Francis snapped. “She is a married woman, and I am an Irish deviant. It’s better to leave well alone, and I have proof - twice - of that.”

“You owe her your life,” James said simply.

“I did not volunteer myself for such a debt.”

“You owe her _my_ life,” James pressed. “And the lives of almost twenty men.”

“Sixteen,” Francis said bitterly. He had not remembered counting them, once they were safe aboard the post ship. It had not occurred to him. But he skimmed the evening reports and saw the number, bare as any stock-take. He had felt ill, and had swayed on his feet, alone, nobody to catch him. “Just sixteen. We sailed with so damn many and returned with so few.”

He took a long drink.

“Enough,” James warned.

“I’m not a damn child.”

“ _Enough_ ,” James said, the voice of a commander. He stood, achy, and Francis longed to help him up; knew exactly how much James loathed it. “Drink your fill. I’m going to bed.”

“You must understand,” Francis struggled, trying to control his temper, “that Sophia and I—”

“I am quite aware of your history,” James said, a sharpness hiding keenly under his offhand tone of voice. “Sir John saw to that, whether I wanted his gossip or no. I have no commentary to offer, Francis. I merely ask you to show her some humility. She has done us a great kindness.”

“She has always been kind,” Francis said distantly. She always had recourse to dismiss him, at any stage in her life, and always she had kept him by her side. Allowed him in her bed. Given him a glimpse of her heart, like a child with a butterfly caught in her hands: delicate, beautiful, easy to crush.

James offered his hand, wearily. He seemed more tired than Francis had seen him in some time, and he hated to have made him so. Francis took it, grateful for peace between them; kissed the back of his hand quickly, and then turned it to kiss his palm, slow. Slower.

“Come to bed, Francis,” James said, low and raw.

Francis put aside his half-drunk whiskey. “Aye,” he murmured. “Aye, James, I think I will.”


	2. Chapter 2

It must have been years since Francis last spent an uneasy half day jostling about in the back of a carriage. The countryside had come to unnerve him: too many vast stretches with too few faces. He was at home with the bustle and shout of harried, excitable men, the slow lurching creak of a frigate, the whip and whistle of an uncaring wind in the struggling sails. Miles and miles of open water.

The chessboard fields and fences of middle England’s provinces, flushed green and swelling with crops and blooms, seemed as unreal to him as a painting now. Beautiful but imaginary, populated by earthen folk who sprang from old wives’ tales and parables. His family had always been townspeople, his father’s hands only ever stained with ink instead of dirt. He recalled his father lining up the children in the hall every Sunday before church to inspect the underside of their nails: grit and grime was punished with a slap upside the ear.

Francis, one of the youngest, had a sneaking pride that he was drawn to the water, even as a boy, and often splashed around in the banks of the Bann rather than the clambering and tussling his brothers loved. It was only ever his feet, hidden by white Church-best socks and spit-polished shoes, that were dirt-flecked.

“A penny for your thoughts,” James said mildly. James’ hand was on his knee, just lightly. Easy to slip back into his own lap if need be.

“Not of Sophia, if that’s your gist,” Francis grumbled.

James hummed in response, low and inscrutable.

In truth, a dull, familiar depression had settled upon Francis’ shoulders. It was soothed in no small amount by James’ presence, and, in a pinch, by a peg of whiskey; nonetheless it remained. At best he could describe it as a loss of hope, as though one chamber of his heart struggled now to beat. Sophia had dredged up ill hurts that Francis had thought buried under the polar ice; melted, a seeping wound again.

“Speak with her,” James had urged.

“What of? She is married now,” Francis told him bitterly, a common refrain.

“You say it as if she were a nun,” James said, impatient. “Speak with her, Francis.”

He had kissed Francis like a full stop. No arguments. Now he simply found Francis’ hand with his own and held for a moment, as though for fortitude.

*

 _I fear I have done you some terrible wrong in seeking to find you alive,_ Sophia had penned to him, a month prior. He could almost see the tremble of her hand in the cursive.

*

Hatton House was a neat, bland sort of place. A plain facade, not dissimilar to the house Francis had grown up in, though many times larger - plain windows, plain walls. Grand enough stone steps leading up to the great hall, but nothing ostentatious. A home for a stern landowner, passed down through generations, no doubt. The sort of home that would look unpleasant in disrepair - no mystery to it, no atmosphere - but under the mid-afternoon sun, a few clouds rolling low in the wide sky above, it was simply a house, no more, no less.

Sophia’s house. Her husband’s house, Francis thought coldly.

They were waiting at the top of the stairs as the carriage drew up, flanked by round-faced staff, the husband’s arms stiff by his side and Sophia’s hands clasped in front of her. Francis could not tell, from this distance, how true her smile was.

“Don’t be petty,” James said, apropos of nothing, and Francis, immediately ignoring his advice, gave no reply.

Sir Clarence Hatton was a gentleman of no defining features whatsoever. He was little more than Sophia’s height, not a tall man but not short enough to remark upon. He was pale, as all landed gentry are, having never worked a day outdoors in his life. Francis would not have been able to say if his dress was _a la mode_ \- and were he in a gamelier mood he might have pressed James for gossip later - and his hair, brown, was cut short enough that it only just began to curl at the edges.

Francis recalled the first time he had seen Sophia. His companion at the time remarked that she was not an outstanding beauty, but pleasant nonetheless, and had an aggravating wit that some men seemed keen on.

He had loved her at once. At once, without question.

James, of course, had taken time to endear himself. Francis had always mistrusted those to whom social climbing came easily, and James was - he thought - his mirror opposite: an Englishman, well suited to public speaking, easy to like, though Francis could not fathom why the lower ranking officers ate up his tiresome stories of valour so voraciously. He loathed boastfulness.

Still, even on their first handshake, Francis had known him, objectively, to be handsome.

(The feeling was—more subjective these days. Moreso still when he buried his hands in James’ hair and took as many kisses as he was allowed.)

This Sir Clarence left no impression on Francis at all, and that, in itself, left a bad taste in his mouth. He could not warm to someone who invited no opinion, and Francis hated this about himself: after all, he was a man other men judged as soon as he opened his mouth to speak. He had seen, in the slight glazing of people’s eyes, the way his standing faltered as soon as he revealed himself to be Irish.

He could not look face-on at Sophia. Only in glances. It felt impolite to drink in her presence as he once did, even, boldly, in the company of Sir John and Lady Jane. He had always damned their low opinion of his courtship, not realising, at the time, that he was shooting himself in foot all the while.

“Are we early?” he murmured to James as they trailed up the steps, slowly, for James’ bad leg was claustrophobic and played up after long stretches as rest. “Who else will come for this fabled shoot? The Rosses, I suppose, if Sophia can be civil to Anne, and Barrow the younger, no doubt—”

He saw James smile wryly out the corner of his eye, and Francis felt his mood sink even lower at once.

“Only us, Francis,” James said, traitorously light. “I never once claimed it to be a party.”

*

Looking up, for an instance, Francis saw that Sophia’s smile was as bright and true as the day he’d first proposed to her. In the moments before she had told him no.

“Francis—” she said, as though letting out a great and long-held sigh.

*

Francis spent their evening meal so deeply disassociated that an hour later he would not even recall what had been served. He drank two glasses of wine and listened with one ear to James’ damnedably easy conversation with Hatton - some jovial nonsense about their proximity to Highclere and how one must pass it when traipsing from the city to Hatton House, though Hatton himself claimed to know little of his imposing neighbours. Sophia chimed in with a story about Lady Carnavon showing her the progression of the interior, her thoughts on the fabric for chaises and drapes, whether she knew any reliable importers of Dutch tile, et cetera et cetera; while Francis emptied his wine glass and raised his hand for a third.

Sophia seemed—

At great ease with her husband. Sweet and jovial. They must have been less than a year out from being newlyweds, and Francis wondered with a pessimistic idleness how their wedding must have gone. Rushed, he supposed, if she was so frantic to marry rich and send out a search party. A short engagement, just long enough to avoid whispers of impropriety.

He had a certain wit about him, it seemed, and Sophia laughed freely all the night through.

She had always been quick to delight in Francis’ company, too.

*

He had joked with James once, when they were lightheaded with desire, breathless from long kisses—

“I’d dress you up in white lace and marry you tomorrow if I could—” he had growled, surprised at his own earnest lust.

“And what would Sophia say?” James had laughed, only able to invoke her name so brazenly because Francis was at his leisure, loose-limbed, hard prick’d, his mouth on James’ neck.

“She’d have no damn say in the matter,” Francis snapped back, and ground his hips against James until neither of them could speak, just breaths and panting, one another’s names, throaty, low sounds and the sudden spill of seed—

He regretted such talk in the morning, with James’ sleeping arms heavy against his waist. Less so the flights of foolish fancy. More that they had blemished Sophia’s name, to speak of her in bed with one another.

Francis kept this to discreetly to himself.

*

He helped James up the staircase once night had fallen and the candles burned low. A reason not to spend another second in Sophia and her husband’s genteel company. Sophia had made a motion towards Francis, as they stood to leave, as though to reach for his arm and touch it in that familiar way she used to: bold, casually intimate.

Apparently she thought better of it, in the present company, and her hand remained at her side.

“My husband likes to take a pipe in the gardens after sunset,” she said, as though the husband could not speak for himself. “Would you join him, Francis?”

Francis could not summon up a worthwhile excuse. “The ride was long,” he said bluntly, “And I am weary.”

“Then—”

“Goodnight, Sophia,” Francis told her, and did not wait for a reply.

He and James took the staircase slowly, on the pretence of admiring the portraits that hung gathering dust on the high walls. Some were faint with age, the old Hatton ancestry, and one, imposingly large and close to the topmost stair was of a stern, thin woman with Sir Clarence’s soft jaw and bland eyes. “The mother, I suppose,” James whispered.

There was always the distant sound of scampering maids in these old houses, pattering back and forth between the hidden tunnels of the walls, and Francis could hear the ticking of three unseen clocks, all ill aligned and out of sync; but the brightest noise was the silvery clack of James’ metal-tipped cane on the stone stairs.

They were alone, and Francis had taken James’ arm without much noticing.

“Stay a moment,” James murmured as they neared his rooms.

“I can hardly stay the night.”

“A moment, I said,” James said, tetchy, and Francis relented with a hum.

He helped James undress. A long day at rest had made him stiffer than he’d admit, and though he loathed Francis acting, as he claimed it, like a steward, Francis himself was quite happy to spend a quiet moment focused on James’ buttons, on divesting him slowly of his clothes and revealing, piece by piece, the body he’d grown so fond of. He could not resist kissing odd patches of skin as they became bare: James’ elbow, under his right arm, his collarbone.

James tolerated it like a cat. Half amused but unreciprocal. He was watching Francis carefully. “Do you loathe me for dragging you here?” he asked, after a time.

“Yes,” Francis replied, dry. “Somewhat.”

“I’ll allow it,” James said, a huff of laughter on his lips. He became serious, then. Found Francis’ jaw with both his hands and pulled him up so that they were chest to chest, face to face. James shockingly vulnerable, naked utterly, and Francis still feeling like James had some kind of upper hand. James’ mouth sought his, chaste at first, and then Francis felt the thick press of his tongue, opened up for it. Perhaps James had not meant to linger on such kisses: he was breathless when he pulled back, and kept his hands fast on Francis’ warm cheeks.

“Francis, it is—” he started, with some difficulty, “—not that I wish to conceal the marks Sophia has left upon you, nor open those wounds anew. I fear you are hiding old scars under fresh. You must air your grievances—”

“James—”

“—So that you may _grieve_ , Francis.” James stroked the pad of his thumb down his jaw, from ear to chin, and in that moment Francis felt pitied by him and hated him for it. Hated, too, his hatred. “We have seen such sights as I would not wish upon my enemies in mere nightmares.”

“To bed, James,” Francis said, hoarse.

James looked sour. “Have you listened to me at all?”

“Goodnight to you, James,” Francis told him shortly, and laid a perfunctory kiss upon his palm, and took his leave.

He had done the same to Sophia, he realised. A moment too late.

*

In the night, unsleeping - the air out here was so less dense than the city, less a blanket and more a breeze that kept rest at perpetual bay - Francis thought he heard—

The soft pad of Sophia’s slippers coming close to the closed door. Some long-ago memorised sound, accompanied by her faint laughter, from nights sneaking out hand in hand, tiptoeing through the corridors under the noses of those noble portraits of Franklins past. He could not tell what hour it was. He stilled his breath to listen harder, but the silence was so deep and long that he wondered if he’d imagined her approach after all—

But then, away. Her delicate tread.

He missed James’ even breath in bed. Nothing to listen to out here, in his wakefulness, but the damned barn owls.

*

Francis still managed to dream; he could not recall what of.

*

A restless night in a strange and lonely bed did nothing to clear his mood by morning, and the thought of a hunt made Francis uneasy in a way he did not understand and certainly disliked. The last time he’d held a gun was in the face of a white demon with the flesh of his men dripping from its ruddy teeth. He could only speak of the thing to James, not another soul, and James had, as he so often did, cut straight to the core of what ailed them.

“Do you ever wonder,” James had said one night, low and sweating from his own terrors, “if we imagined the whole ordeal? If those men—did they really die like that, so awfully?”

“Yes, I wonder,” Francis had murmured. “But I do not believe my wonderings.”

Perhaps that was what he’d dreamt of. The bear.

That harbinger.

*

She had neglected her parasol - that was Sophia’s excuse. It was mid-morning and the sun was not even over-bright.

James had abandoned Francis to his fate. He complained apologetically about his leg, the slowness of his gait, the fact that he could not keep up with Francis’ sprightly jog. “You shall have to entertain him in my stead, Sophia,” he said, smiling, too bold. Sir Clarence, the ever-present husband, seemed quite happy with this arrangement, falling back with James to discuss this and that, the state of his game, the health of the pheasants, and how attentive his gameskeeper had been at keeping foxes off the estate this spring.

Sophia’s cheeks were pinched pink, and her smile was subdued, as though she were keeping it at bay. Francis hated this mood of conspiracy. He was the kind of seaman who prepared himself for all circumstances well in advance: he did not like a weather change sprung upon him.

She told him to come back to the house with her, for that damned parasol. “We’ll find it faster with two,” she said, and it sounded as though she had meant to say something else entirely.

*

He remembered—

Growling against her skin, deep and pleased. “I cannot fathom you, Sophia.”

“Nor I you,” she retorted, her small hands on his wide, naked back. “What sirens of the sea call you, hmm?”

“None,” Francis lied, kissing her neck, open-mouthed. “None would have sway over me if you were my wife. I would be landlocked.”

“Untruths do not become you, Francis,” she had said, raising her eyebrow first, and then her hips, sinking upon him with a keening gasp that seemed pulled from her very throat—

*

As soon as they entered the anteroom - dismissed off all staff, it seemed, for privacy - Sophia turned to him like a weather vane in a sudden north wind. “Francis,” she said, the same way she had said his name upon the rescue ship, as if it had been two years since she had spoken it. “Francis, we must—Please, hear me. We must talk.”

“You invited me here to hunt,” Francis said, holding his voice even.

“And you have always taken me at my word?”

Francis said nothing. He was already exhausted by an argument that had not begun. He had been tired since they set foot back in London, a psychological kind of fatigue that had seemed to travel from his muscles into his mind. The ache in his legs from the long walk had never dissipated, it had simply moved upwards, transmuted into a constant, dull headache.

Sophia had never been shy to speak her mind, but she seemed hesitant now. It was an unpretty look on her. She smoothed down the front of her skirts and he recognised it as a forestalling tactic of his own. Well employed at overstuffed dinner parties.

“Talk, then,” he said at last. “If we must.”

She seemed not to know where to begin. Had he so many flaws that she could not pick one to alight upon?

“These fits of melancholy, Francis—James worries for you. He has freely admitted it.”

This irked him. “Only to you, it seems.”

“You will not listen to solemnity—”

“Is this your opinion, or his?” Francis turned on her, frowning. “It seems you and he have become bosom friends behind my back.”

“If you intend to twist my words, I’ll speak more plainly,” Sophia snapped, a shaking kind of steel in her voice. “Do you despise me, Francis?”

He barked out a laugh that echoed around the empty hall, becoming ever more quiet and bitter. “Are we being blunt then? I love you,” he spat, as though it were a curse. “I have always loved you and you have always known it.”

She was utterly silent. And some glacier in Francis’ heart cracked, shattering, and cascaded into the icy water his feet had been stuck in for what seemed like years.

He faced away from her as he spoke. Cowardly. “I wish you had left me out there,” he murmured.

“You walked eight hundred miles to survive, Francis. A man does not do such things lightly.”

“I walked for my men. Just as I sailed for your uncle.”

“I am not your Captain, Francis. I gave you no orders.” She seemed close to tears.

“Sophia—” he started, and then did not know how he meant to go on. His fist closed at his side. “Sophia. You have stated your terms plainly. I must live for you, but I cannot love you.”

“I have never—”

“If this is to be our contract,” Francis went on, his voice raised above hers, “then you must let me abide by it. I beg of you. Leave me in peace, Sophia.”

She did cry then, turning her eyes to the ceiling to try and catch her tears before they spilled over her cheeks. “There is no peace in you, Francis.”

He could not stay still a moment longer, and he slapped out at the wall, a childish, physical anger that rattled the trinkets on a nearby dresser. His knuckles stung from the blow, but Sophia did not flinch. “What would you have of me, then?”

And here she took in a deep, shuddering breath, as close to a sob as she would allow him to hear. Francis desperately wanted her to be happy, and he had never had a damn clue how to go about it.

“I do love you, Francis,” she said, quiet and shockingly steady. “Everything I have done for you has been in earnest.”

He had no reply to this. Could dredge nothing up from the sludge in his belly.

“I would—” she wetted her lips. “I would have us as we once were, Francis.”

He scoffed deeply. “If you despise your husband so—”

“You forget yourself,” she snapped, hard-edged and loud, and took a step towards him. “That is an assumption I will not allow you to make.”

They were almost chest to chest now. She a head smaller than him, and yet Francis never once felt as though he were looking down on her. He missed her lips. He missed the whole of her, like a limb amputated while he had lain unconscious. Awoken, matter of fact, to find it gone and the wound neatly cauterised.

She did not wipe away her tears. Just let them linger until he could stand it no longer.

Francis had always been just as quick to soften as he was to snap.

He took the last step left between them. Cupped her soft jaw between his sea-roughened palms, and kissed the corner of her left eye. She sighed his name like a secret prayer. Francis couldn’t stand not to kiss her; so he did. How he did.

The curve of Sophia’s lips was long-missed and achingly familiar. The weight and taste of her tongue so different than what he’d become used to with James. She put her hands on his waist at first, almost unfelt above his layers of spring tweed, but he felt her body sway against his, felt her hands come up to his cheeks, their desperate affection mirrored now, kissing with equal fervour, neither of them wanting more nor less—

A peppering of distant gunfire pealed out from the grounds.

Francis did not tear away from her, but they did stop. Abrupt and unwanted. He lingered a while with his forehead touching hers.

Sophia wetted her bottom lip again to speak, and Francis chased her tongue-tip with his thumb. Her lips already felt bruised from his mouth.

“I thought of you, when it snowed,” Sophia murmured, ever so sad. “At other times too, of course. But especially when the cold was at its most biting. I thought—that I could feel as you felt, in those moments.”

Inch by inch, he pulled away from her.

“It was colder than you can fathom,” he said, all the passion gone from his voice. Simply flat, now.

“Yes,” Sophia said miserably. “But I wish you would help me understand it nonetheless.”

*

She neglected to fetch her parasol before they rejoined the others.

The husband was unruffled, but when Francis glanced at James on their approach, two dead pheasants dangling by the neck from his crooked fingers, he looked, for a brief moment, utterly stricken.

The expression was so quickly smoothed over. Like an errant hair brushed back in line.

*

Francis felt as both David and Goliath, frantically flinging pebbles at his own head. Terrified to crack through the skull in case, instead of blood gushing out from his temple, there was only ice, hardened and pale and inscrutable.

*

He did his best to spend the next weeks in the heel of a whiskey bottle.

Drinking was a familiar vice. Their liquor cabinet, long stocked with James’ brand of gin and a few dusty wine bottles, became full overnight, as though Francis were preparing for a long journey: months-worth of the stuff. He accepted dinner invitations with gusto, and without James, that he could souse himself in peace in other people’s company. He did not want James’ condemnation, nor his affection, and though they slept side by side, as had become their habit, it was little more than sleeping now.

Francis felt some cloudy terror that James would taste Sophia in his mouth.

What that might portend, he couldn’t say. Only that he did not want to take the risk.

He had seen several letters delivered to their rooms addressed, in her hand, to James. Not a single one for him. Perhaps she had taken him at his word for once.

Her silence brought him no peace; to be blunt, he ached for her.

*

“Stay awhile with me,” James asked most nights, neither pleading nor an order.

Francis had already shrugged his coat about his shoulders. “I’ll be late,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself to stay up.”

*

Rain had threatened the streets all night.

Francis wandered where his feet took him. He had thought perhaps to find a seat at Drury Lane, waste a few hours with his hip flask and the Bard, but the crowd was more elegant than he felt. High class made him bitter when he was deep in his cups. Instead, he found a bawdy little melodrama in one of the Soho back-alley theatres, where nobody would think his drinking amiss or his scoffing too loud.

The raucous crowd soothed him. Not the organised rabble of a ship at sea, but it reminded him of the men's bored afternoons on the ice with a ball to kick or a few licentious poems to recite. Before their ranks had been forcibly thinned.

It was drizzling when the theatre spat them back out. Most scampered for cover or cabs, or pulled their coats up around their ears and trotted on home. But Francis was drunk, idle, and had nothing to drive him. He did not want to crawl into bed with James, not with whiskey on his breath. He did not want to traverse the streets and catch glimpses of late-night lovers, amorous and uncaring who knew it. There was a listlessness in Francis he had not known since the set-in of their second winter on the ice - the realisation that life would be unchanging and harsh for months to come.

“Captain! My good Captain,” the shout came.

He could not find its source at first.

“Crozier—is that it? Captain Crozier?”

It was a holy man. A preacher, his leather-bound bible in one hand, and a stack of pamphlets in the other. He had recognised Francis’ face from the newspaper sketches, no doubt; he and James both had sat for interviews and etchings, on their sudden return, and James had commented dryly that the artist was a master of realism. No flattery in his stroke.

“Let me shake your hand, sir,” the preacher asked, stuffing his papers under one arm, both his palms outstretched. Reluctant, Francis went to him. “Congratulations, Captain, congratulations—”

At this, Francis couldn’t help but scoff. “What for, Father?”

“On your miraculous return!” the preacher cried. He must have been eulogising all the cold night through, to a crowd that wanted burlesque instead of psalms, and was delighted at the chance for a real interaction, no matter how ill at ease Francis seemed. “You are proof, sir, of God’s grace!”

Francis kept his gaze, coldly. “Go on.”

“God has kept you safe and hale on your long voyage and brought you home to England—” Here, Francis laughed, an ugly thing, but the preacher stumbled on, shouting to the dregs of the crowd now. “God has saved this man, and he will save whomever so asks—!”

Francis had not let go of his hand, and pulled him close.

“And what of my men, Father?” he asked, dangerously low. The stench of whiskey on his breath must have been overpowering. “What of them? Where was God when they asked for His mercy? When they begged for His grace?”

The preacher looked startled for a moment, and then his face settled into something like pity. It roiled in Francis’ stomach, and curled his lip, ugly. “He has called them home,” the preacher said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You should not mourn for them, Captain. They are home.”

“They had homes,” Francis hissed. “They had homes and lives and loves and God cared naught for it.” He had pulled the preacher towards him with a vicious jerk, grabbing his wrist now. Francis was not a tall man but there was violence in his stance, alcohol in his blood, and a driving melancholy that had affixed itself to his soul.

Perhaps he would have raised his hand. Perhaps not.

But like a gong, clear and forceful, a voice from the other end of the street called out.

“ _Francis._ ”

He whipped around, and the preacher, in his moment of distraction, tried to tug his hand free of Francis’ grip. He was not so easily brushed aside. Some primal sense of fight set alight in Francis and unthinking, he grabbed the preacher by the neck, got him held fast in the crook of his elbow, grappling with him for more than moment until his name, in that strong voice, rang out again, and a heavy hand landed on Francis’ shoulder—

He dropped the preacher, spun on his heel and lashed out at the interloper, a vicious backhand—

Metal and wood clattered to the wet cobbles. The crunching thud of a body falling on stone.

It had begun to rain. In his numb haze, he had not even noticed. Francis’ hair was already dripping in front of his eyes.

On the street in front of him, James sat dumbstruck where he had fallen. His cheek was already glowing pink where Francis’ knuckles had caught him. His grey overcoat was stained with rainwater and flecked with mud from the road. His cane had been thrown two yards or more to the side.

The preacher had fled.

A cold, seeping horror spread through Francis’ veins. He dropped at once to his knees.

“James—” he gasped. “James, what on—why are you here?” He scrambled for James’ cane, held it out to him, gathered James up in his arms. “Why are you here?” he said again, an urgent whisper now, as he clung to James under the driving rain. He kept meaning to apologise, but the words would not come. Instead: “Did you—did you _stalk_ me?”

James’ hands curled into fists against his chest. “Of course I fucking did,” he hissed, the curse as brutal as a slap. “You leave the house with half a bottle of whiskey in your pocket and think I wouldn’t follow you? Christ, Francis. You made me stand at the back of that God-forsaken play for an hour or more. It was bloody awful,” he said, almost laughing, and Francis could not tell if his voice was wet from the rain or from a burbling sob stuck fast in his throat.

Drunk couples veered, hysterical, to avoid tripping over them in the street. They were a spectacle, and Francis had made them so.

He breathed in the damp scent of James’ hair, his nose buried in it. It was a close as he could come, out here, to kissing him. “Forgive me,” he murmured. An honest request he did not entirely want an honest answer to. “Forgive me, James, I am—I’m not myself.”

“You are,” James said, sadly. “You are quite yourself, Francis.”

The rain beat down upon them like a lash.

Francis, still half drunk, wondered if it rained the same in Newbury. Upon Sophia’s windows and rooftops.

“Take me home,” Francis murmured unhappily, as they helped each other up. “Please, James.”

“I have you,” James told him softly. “Take my arm, here. I have you, Francis.”


	3. Chapter 3

James had not forgotten a word of Sophia’s outpouring, too long held close to her chest. He had been bed-ridden, bored and ill-mannered, and he was as polite as he could be with her. To speak anew of Sir John’s death struck him like a blunt knife, a pain he had not expected, and he was in no place to comfort her. But she was a pragmatic woman - her reputation preceeded her - and she accepted her uncle’s loss with a set to her jaw that implied it was not surprising news.

Not soon after, she began to speak of Francis. As though a Papist at confessional. “I am no priest,” James admitted, “And I cannot claim to be free of judgement for how you have treated him. He dotes upon you.”

She nodded, still stern. She was braced well enough to be weighed and measured by him; it was how men had treated her all her life, she said honestly.

She talked of Francis as sadly as a widow; as beautifully as a poet.

James found that he liked her very much indeed.

*

It was, of course, during this dull and long passage back to England, with Francis and Sophia passing each other in the corridors outside his room like ships in the night, that James fell in love with Francis. Sophia’s stories of his well of unending kindness, and Francis there to provide the evidence of it; bluntly put, there was no arguing it. 

“Francis is very difficult to like,” Sophia told him, a kindred soul, “and ever so easy to love.”

James had perhaps a week of melancholy over it. Then, as he had done with similar afflictions in his youth and as a young Lieutenant, he bucked up and carried on. 

*

Sophia had always been searingly earnest in her missives to him, an intent James tried to match as best he could, though his truths were often couched in euphemism and dry wit. 

The morning after his first night in bed with Francis’ barrell chest and bare thighs pressed against him, he sat at his desk to write Sophia, and his pen hovered so long above the paper that it spilled ink from its nib and he was forced to start afresh.

_ Life certainly does take its twists and turns, does it not?  _ was about as close as he came to admitting it.

*

Nevertheless—

Nevertheless, Francis truly was very difficult to like. 

*

First, James needed Francis out of the house.

He was sober for the first time in weeks, and though far from incapacitated, was quite vocal in making sure James knew of his bodily discomfort. He griped about soreness in his throat and pains in his ankles, though fell silent in gratitude for at least a time when James brought him cold water and settled Francis’ leg across his lap to knead his ankle between forefinger and thumb. “You’ll be borrowing my cane before long,” James said mildly.

“I won’t look half so handsome,” Francis grumbled, and James could not help but kiss him. He tasted of himself; not of drink, and it encouraged James to kiss him for far longer than was proper of a late Sunday morning. Polite women filed out of church as, in secret, they kissed. 

“Enough,” James managed, more to himself than Francis. “The kitchen is empty and we are bereft of luncheon. Go and fetch something, will you?”

“You speak to your captain like this?” Francis said, and James was delighted by his spirit. 

“Have you not heard, Francis? I am honourably discharged.”

“A sore loss for the Discovery Service,” Francis muttered, though how much he believed it, James couldn’t say. Despite a lifetime of service, Francis’ opinion of the Admiralty was historically low.

James kissed him once more. He had always been weak to it. Men at sea craved quick release and instant absolution of their guilt; James had learnt fast not to seek the comfort of kisses. He relished it with Francis, though, and indulged as often as he was able. “Enough,” he said brightly. “First to the fishmonger, and then bread, if you will. We are clean through the butter.”

“It is cold,” Francis gristled.

“The fresh air does wonders for one’s health, so they say.”

There was no arguing with James when he was spry. Still, Francis waylaid his trek a minute or two more: his hand heavy on the back of James’ neck, his mouth warm and open against James’ bottom lip. If they could have subsisted on kisses—

Still, there was always a moment when Francis parted from him that James felt the sighing weight of his body as he exhaled. A fathomless exhaustion. 

James had written to Sophia of the altercation with the preacher. He had been as open with her then as he had ever been in their half-year of epistolary companionship.  _ I am afraid for Francis,  _ he wrote,  _ I am afraid of what he has done to you, and what he may do to me, and what he is doing to himself. _

It had been calmer, since that point. And yet—

And yet James could not shake the low unhappiness in the pit of his belly when he caught Francis in moment of distraction. When he thought himself unheeded, Francis’ expression was utterly bland. Bereft of any care. As though he wore his smile for James alone and put it in his pocket for the rest of the world.

_ And I, _ Sophia had written him.  _ I beg an hour of your company, James.  _

He apologised at once for the subterfuge and gave her the name of a nearby hotel: pricy, but she was now the wife of a man of means. As soon as Francis had pulled his coat on and left for his errands, James flagged down the cleanest boy he could see, pressed a half-crown into his palm, and told him another was waiting if he escorted one Mrs Hatton safely from her room two streets down to this very front door. 

Within minutes, she was on his doorstep.

“James,” she said, and her voice was as warm as a hearth. Once they were inside, she kissed his cheek, boldly European. 

His hand lingered a moment at her elbow to show he did not mind a bit. 

*

He poured tea, and asked after the health of her husband; she enquired how his leg was treating him and if he was not too listless in retirement, and with these niceties dispensed, they talked business. 

“Permit me to be frank,” Sophia said with a sad smile that acknowledged she was rarely anything but, “but I believe you to love Francis at least as much as I do.”

James said nothing, but his silence was merely omission, not unkindness.

She sighed, and seemed unable to look at him for a moment, her eyes fixed on some distant point through the wall. “I am at a loss, James. Does he truly hate me so much for bringing him home?”

“He hates himself, I believe,” James said carefully, “for having so light a load to be brought home with.”

Some helpless anger flitted behind Sophia’s eyes. “If I had come sooner—”

“It’s not that,” James shook his head. “Francis would have been damned either way. For a captain to lose his ship, and his men—you cannot fathom it, Sophia. None can who have not been to so harsh a sea. Even I—” and he paused a moment, thinking, all at once, of how fast the fire had licked up the canvas walls of his man-made folly. Quieter, then: “Even I cannot claim to know all of Francis’ loss. A little of it, yes. But not all.”

There was silence between them for a moment, an unhappy pause, and James felt, not for the first time in Sophia’s company, that Francis might have been able to buoy them. He was far better at lifting up others than staying afloat himself. 

Sophia ran her thumb around the rim of her teacup. It was still near full, overly milky, and she had to hold both cup and saucer carefully. Still, she needed something to occupy her restless hands. “My husband—” she started, then took a short, steadying breath, and tried again.

“My husband has never once held anything against Francis. He knows of our history, and of my unchanged feelings. If I had money and means,” she said, a slip of anger pricking her tone, “I should have sent my own expedition to salvage him, and married him the second we set foot on land.” She let out a quiet laugh. “I’d have taken priest with me to consecrate the ship, and married him there and then.”

Flighty emotions, James knew, were something Francis inspired regularly. Fits of tomfoolery and fancy. “I suspect,” he said gently, “had you the money and means, you would have accepted his first proposal.”

She could only laugh, and her bitterness had some echo of Francis in it. They were quite exceedingly well suited. 

Sophia went on with her story. “Clarence would have remained a happy bachelor his full life, were it not for his mother. When her husband was on his deathbed, she convinced him to amend his will, insomuchas the estate would only pass in its entirety to Clarence upon his taking a wife. He had an older brother, you see, far more favoured by their parents, who was irrevocably injured in a riding accident and later took his own life.” To her credit, Sophia did not so much as glance at James’ failing leg. “His mother is a selfish woman,” Sophia said, but there was a modicum of respect in the way she said it, perhaps one woman to another. “She did not trust Clarence with the care of the house and its land. He was trapped, worthless until wed. I was convenient in freeing up his coffers,” she said, amused.

Then Sophia caught herself. “Please, James—I would not lead you to believe I think ill of my husband.”

“You speak of him so fondly,” James reassured her. He had delighted in their company at Hatton, despite Francis proving a stormy distraction. 

“We love each other as brother and sister,” she murmured, as though she had not meant to admit it so openly. But the words were spoken, and James knew her inference plainly enough.

“Might I be bold enough to suggest your husband and I have some—dispositional similarity?” James told her tentatively. It was as much as he could offer her safely, and he hoped desperately she would take his meaning. It would make everything so much simpler. 

He had, after all, a dangerous plan in mind. 

A frown shadowed her face for a second. And then it passed, leaving only a thoughtful look.

James felt as though he were hanging at the edge of a low precipice: the fall might not kill him, but could, for certain, do untold damage. He had spent so much of his life a vain man, and to be seen so vulnerable was not a pleasant experience. He reached out his palm for Sophia’s, and she met his gesture at once, putting her lukewarm tea aside so that they might clasp hands. It was Sophia, now, who could pull him up or let him fall. 

“Sophia, I speak to you not as a threat but as a friend; I hope a dearest friend.” He put his other hand atop hers gently, and looked at the knot of their fingers instead of her eyes. He had never been a bold Commander, always seeking reassurance that his orders were wise. Better as a Second, as part of an office, not the whole of it. “You have always been open with me and I hope only to treat you with the same kindness and honour you have shown me. This is no slight against you, you have my word.”

“James—” She was confused, he could see, but not angry. He was forestalling and she saw right through it.

Truly, he liked her very much. 

“Sophia—” he licked his lips, trying to find delicate words. There were none, and she had proven herself far beyond fragility. He did not need them. James let his shoulders slump a little, resigned. “Francis and I—share a closeness that I believe you and he once did. That I believe you wish to rekindle.”

He did not think so little of her that she would misunderstand his meaning, protest of James and Francis’ great brotherhood. He felt her grip on his hand loosen, just a little. Sophia swallowed, and then slowly, gave him a single nod.

“Have I shocked you very much?” He asked. James could feel how sad his smile was, and wished he could conceal it.

Sophia paused a moment before responding. Her own smile was just as small, just as uncertain. “A little,” she said. It stung, although it was an old kind of sting, like a needle pricked under the surface of his skin and left to bruise days later. “But not  _ very _ much.”

“I am glad,” he murmured, stepping back from the precipice. “I am so very glad.”

*

They drank their tea and fell, hesitantly at first, and then with no small degree of comfort, back into talking of Francis. His habits and foibles, and his particular skills. 

“He kisses exquisitely,” James said, sly, looking at her sidelong. 

“Like a man about to hang,” Sophia replied at once, and they could not help but laugh.

*

“I have a proposition for you,” James said, his machinations still unravelling. “A sort of treaty, if you’ll hear it.”

Sophia, quite to his relief, was amenable.

 

_ meanwhile. _

 

The day was cold, yes, though at least it was bright. Winter, left lurking, had attempted a last-ditch mutiny, wheezing over the warmer spring air. But the sun was high and proud, the sky reeling above the city, and the masses seemed jovial. 

Francis kept his coat collar turned up, and his cap pressed low to his forehead. 

He had a white loaf bagged under his arm and two trout wrapped in brown paper, so fresh they’d barely quit wriggling. An ageing crook was selling thick glass bottles of whiskey and rum from a two wheeled cart that he shifted slowly up and down the street, and Francis’ feet dragged when they crossed paths. He knew he had rallied through his stores too fast, and was near dry once more; but the thought of James’ disappointment kept his money in his pocket. 

He felt as a broken ice floe. Buffeted by the crowd with little will of his own. Boys in short trousers, ill prepared for the cold snap, ran by him shouting after one another; not so much younger than he had been when, with a serious disposition and a shaking voice, he had signed up for the Navy. A loud woman was hawking lacy handkerchiefs and dainty white caps, her hands gnarled from the strain of such intricate work; “For your lady wife?” she called at Francis as he passed, and Francis could not help a bitter snort. 

He had not heard from Sophia personally since the dreadful hunt. Quite rightly. 

Blanky, if he still lived, would have been stern with Francis, assured him that men such as themselves took only their ships as wives and the sea as a mistress. But Blanky was long gone, and James was more reticent to comment on Francis’ marital prospects. He was, of course, in a delicate position. 

The wind picked up again and sent a few loose articles and pamphlets dancing down the busy street. A scrap of newsprint caught against Francis’ ankle and would not be dislodged, so he bent down, cussing under his breath, to nudge it free; his cap, already loose from the breeze, tumbled to the ground, kicked aside by so many harried feet. Francis swore loud enough to be heard, but nobody paid him any heed this time. 

Nobody—

“—Captain?”

A mistake, surely.

“Captain—!”

Francis felt his whole body stiffen. A cold dread seeped into his bones, the kind he had not felt since they were ice-bound and hunted by a demon. Forget the cap, he thought frantically. It was not worth another altercation. 

“Captain Crozier, sir—?” This voice, though, was soft and familiar somehow. “Can it be you?”

He felt caught, like a hare between a gushing river and a charge of hounds. And then Francis grabbed the panic in his fist and forced it low beneath his ribs, buried in the pit of his stomach to drown in the acid there. He could not abide by feeling so stricken here on land, when his courage had steadied him so many times upon the ice. 

He turned,  and sought out the voice head on.

There—still and smiling in the flustered crowd.

“John Bridgens,” Francis said quietly, warmth flooding his voice. His echoing smile was quite genuine.

Bridgens was some yards away from him, and nodded to an emptier patch of the street, almost apologetically. A request, not a demand, and one that Francis was more than happy to acquiesce to. The slim opening to an alleyway provided them space to talk and at once Francis tucked all his groceries under one arm so that he could shake Bridgens’ hand. “Well met, Mr Bridgens,” he said, all earnest. He truly was glad to see the man.

Bridgens had been sturdy and reliable aboard the rescue, always willing to help where he was able, fetching and carrying for the post ship’s doctor, assisting the store-master, tallying the worst of the men’s injuries in a neat report for Francis - he remembered Bridgens’ hand being scribe-like, surprisingly well written for a man of his bearing. 

They had all gone their own ways on reaching Portsmouth, of course. Francis had been distracted by the smart carriage there to collect Sophia and her husband; and with helping James down from the gangplank. He might have seen Bridgens with a canvas sack holding his meagre belongings, whatever he had salvaged from the abandoned  _ Erebus _ , but would have lost him at once in crowd of well-wishers, naysayers and reporters that formed their welcome party back in excitable England. 

His voice was as kind as Francis recalled it. “I am glad as I’ve ever been to see you, sir,” he said, still holding Francis’ palm in both his own. “Not to bother you or keep you, just to shake your hand once again and call you Captain.”

Francis’ smile was wry. “It’s become a tainted sort of word to my ears, and I’m pleased to hear you put some colour back in it.”

“I may serve under other men, sir, but likely none so deserving of the title than you.” Bridgens seemed flustered by his earnestness, and his cheeks, above his greying beard, were pinched red from the cold or mild embarrassment or hearty pleasure; perhaps a mix of the three. “I am up in Norwich now, with Henry - Mr Peglar, sir - living a stone’s throw from three churches as any man does in such a town. Henry overcame the worst of his scurvy—he is quite alive I’m pleased to report. I have not heard of any man among us who came to a sorry ending after our long journey, save for those who, God rest them, were already lost—But forgive me my rambling, sir.” He took a huffing breath, apologetic. “I’m—I am terribly glad to see you well.”

Francis held his smile in place decently enough. He did not remember what it was to feel well.

Bridgens finally let Francis’ hand drop, though it was done without fanfare and was not awkward for him to have held Francis for so long. “Please, thank your lady friend for me. For us. I’m—I’m ashamed, sir, I cannot remember her name.”

“Sophia,” Francis said evenly. “Sophia Hatton.”

It was not the first time he had spoken her married name aloud; but it was still sour.

“And Commander Fitzjames? Is he also well?”

“Quite well,” Francis assured him. 

There was something so uncomplicated in Bridgens’ responding happiness. He was here, alive, and thankful to be so; and thankful moreso for every man who had stepped aboard Sophia’s rescue ship. 

Francis had spent so long thinking of the ones who had perished. Not those who had—

Had been given the chance to go on living. 

Francis made his excuses to leave. He had Bridgens write his address on the brown paper bag around his loaf of bread, that they might exchange a letter or meet for a drink, if the occasion arose. And then they shook hands once more and departed, losing one another swiftly in the still-gushing stream of midday cityfolk. Every one living. 

Every one alive.

  
  


*

Francis arrived home, his mind stewing. Blankly, he hung up his coat, reached for his cap before remembering it had been lost in the morning’s fray. He stamped the roadside dirt from his boots and pulled them off, then padded through to the kitchen in his socks. The bread he left on the wooden chopping board by the hob, and then he fetched out a large pan from the cupboards, his knees sore as he crouched, and put the two fish, still wrapped, inside it for later. 

He took a deep, steadying breath. Then called for James, and went to sitting room to slump into his chair by the unlit fireplace, burying his face in his hands. He heard James follow in behind him, his step quieter than usual, or perhaps just Francis’ muggy head tricking him. He rubbed his temples, and felt absurdly old. 

James put a hand ever so lightly on Francis’ shoulder. “I have been the worst kind of fool, James,” Francis murmured. He sought James’ palm with his own, covered it, and did not recognise it at all. In an instant he was upon his feet, hot with anger and shock—

It was not James. It was not James here, but Sophia. 

“Soph—”

“Hush, Francis,” she soothed, as gently as she might a colt. “Please. We have tried words. Let us try something else.”

And before he could utter a word, she had stepped forward to place both her hands lightly upon his chest, and had craned up upon her toes, and pressed her lips so gently to his open mouth. 

“Will you let me kiss you?” she whispered.

Francis laughed, shakily, under his breath. “Whether I will or will not hardly seems to matter, does it?” He let his head drop to her lips again, so much softer than when they had kissed last, in utter anger. But he was unmoored, off-kilter. “How can you be here, Sophia?”

“You asked me the very same in that terrible Arctic,” she said, soft and sad. “And I still have no good answer for you. I am here because I am.”

“You should despise me,” Francis muttered. 

“I do,” Sophia said, gutting, “in some ways, yes. But you must understand that I love you, Francis. I have only ever done what I must because I love you most ardently.”

She seemed tremulous. So unlike her old familiar confidence. And Francis realised with a low ache that she was desperate. Not to have him, but desperate not to lose him again. 

He had been terrible to her. 

They were terrible for each other, in so many ways. 

Badly, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted her in all the old ways, lustful and uncaring, without the chasm of duty and class between them. Without a wedding ring upon her finger, placed there by another man who had had to ask only once. He wanted, Francis thought abruptly, to have with Sophia what he had with James, an easy and private companionship, welcoming, without the weight of societal expectation, merely kisses and comfort, bodies, a safe vent for ugly emotions—

But to have one would mean to lose the other, Francis knew. 

“Francis.”

He looked up to the doorway sharply. 

“James—”

James, too, held out his hand as if to soothe Francis, to tame him. “It’s quite all right, Francis,” he said, stepping into the room. Francis felt as though those eight hundred miles they had trudged had all flooded back into his muscle and bone; his legs could barely hold him up and he did not know why. “We are—Sophia and I are in agreement. If—if, of course, you are agreeable too.”

“To what should I agree?” Francis said helplessly. Sophia was still in his arms. 

“To this,” she whispered. “Nothing more.”

She kissed him again, then. A chaste thing, nervous and new. And then James had reached them from across the room, and his hand too was upon Francis’ arm, reassuring and calm, and then his mouth—his  _ mouth _ —like a soft shadow of Sophia’s kiss, pressed against Francis’ lips as easily as he had always managed. 

The three of them stood so close, all touching, all their warm breaths mingling between them as if in a sacred circle. Francis, for a second, closed his eyes and thought of King William Land. Empty, endless, littered with bodies; but long distant. 

He was not there. No, he was no longer there, nor never would be again. 

*

Luncheon was forgotten. It could damn well wait.

*

They settled in James’ room, though settled was hardly the word for it. 

Francis remembered so well, despite the interim years of waiting, how quickly riled Sophia became, when she put her mind to it. The very first time they had made love - in that autumnal lake, afternoon sun and brown leaves frittering down to land around their bodies in the water - she could scarcely strip out of her dress fast enough. She had been laughing, giddy, and had put her palm against him as soon as he was bare, a teasing touch that she abandoned for only a moment; she wanted him as deeply as he wanted her. 

James had always been well-collected, when they made love, right up until the very end. Sophia was ragged and impatient, quick to laugh and quicker to moan; James kept his facade of uprightness almost until the point he spilled, when he always buckled to the pressure, moaned low, cursed and praised Francis in the same breath.

Francis found himself light-headed at the thought both might occur, here, in rapid succession.

They had no precedent for the logistics. Francis found himself on his back, on the bed, with Sophia’s soft mouth peppering kisses across his lips and neck while James was still undressing. He seemed amused by her; not aroused, and he had admitted as much to Francis in the past. Yes, he had lain with women in his youth and yes, he had found it more a chore than a pleasure. Instead, whenever Francis chanced to look up at him, their eyes met as though James would not risk an instant glanced away from him. His skin was very flushed. He was certainly aroused; not by Sophia, but by the sight of her upon Francis. By Francis. 

The thought sat low in his thudding heart, made its beat brutal against his chest. 

“James—” he murmured, almost a growl, reaching out. “James, come here—”

“I’m here, I’m here,” James griped lightly. He brushed his hand across Sophia’s back as he passed, a gentle reassurance that barely made her pause in her kisses, but it sent a shock of desire deep through Francis’ wracked body. To see James’ fingers upon her pale skin, and know where his fingers had been—

“May I have you?” Sophia asked, her lips pert and wet.

“Christ,” Francis muttered.

“Let us hope He turns His gaze for a moment or two, hmm?” James said wryly. He settled himself easily behind Francis, nudging up his head and shoulders to rest in James’ lap, and Francis turned to press his mouth and teeth against James’ thigh - enjoyed the soft hiss that James let loose, as he carded his fingers through Francis’ damp hair. 

“Are you comfortable, my dear?” Sophia asked. Her hands were running in two tracks along Francis’ pelvis, framing his prick. 

“That is a word for it, I suppose,” Francis managed, feeling the rumble of laughter in James’ belly. And then she raised herself up, utterly bare and flushed down to her navel, and with a sigh that all three of them echoed, she eased herself down upon him, wet and familiar; a kind of homecoming. 

*

There was a moment, among all of it, when he was deep inside Sophia as he had long craved to be, her hands braced upon his broad chest and James’, just above hers, on his shoulders; and Sophia leant forward to kiss him, her mouth as gentle as her hips were rough, and her lips slid to the side of his mouth, down across his cheek and to his jaw, and, seamlessly, James took up her place, his kiss quite different and just as familiar, and Francis could do nothing but keen, not bereft, not bereft, no, but overwhelmed by it, by the both of them, and he gripped Sophia’s hip with one hand and clutched back for James hair above him with the other, and then,  _ ah_, with a pained sigh, he was coming—

Francis was—

*

“James,” he panted, “James—you have been—quite neglected—”

“Next time,” James assured him softly, and there was so much promise in those two words.

*

It was as though he had woken from a long dream that he could not now recall. Had it been a nightmare? Even in this, Francis was unsure.

It was indulgent to have dozed so early in the afternoon, but they had all fallen into it. Francis could not find it within him at present to be ashamed; he was sure it would creep up on him later. But now he craved nothing, not drink, not the sea. Nothing more than what he had: James’ hands upon his skin, still with sleep, his pulse beating through his thumb and palm; and Sophia’s body curved into his side, unblemished, his sleeping saviour.

“We left so many behind,” he remembered saying. It felt a lifetime ago. It stung less to think of it, now. Wounds were surprisingly slow to heal. It stung, certainly. But less. Like a bell pealing out, loud at first and then beginning, by degrees, to fade.

They had left so many behind. But not all.

That was the crux of it, he thought, as James and Sophia both, almost simultaneously, shifted beside him in their sleep.

No; not all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty to a lot of people on this, but most especially to t & d & b for being unnecessarily kind and enthusiastic. 
> 
> <3


End file.
